Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities(CIAHD)- Environmental Rev

University Of Michigan At Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of the Center for Integrative Approaches to Health Disparities (CIAHD) at the University of Michigan is to investigate the multilevel determinants of health disparities in cardiovascular risk by integrating social and biologic factors. As part of this proposed revision we will add an environmental assessment core in order to enhance the environmental measures available in the Jackson Heart Study (JHS) and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Existing evidence strongly suggests that environmental features are strongly patterned by neighborhood race/ethnic and socioeconomic composition. Cross-sectional data also suggest that the environmental features are associated with cardiovascular-related outcomes. However, important questions remain regarding whether these associations reflect causal processes. Two key requirements to improve causal inferences include (1) improving the measures of specific neighborhood features hypothesized to be linked to cardiovascular disease;and (2) incorporating these measures in longitudinal studies. We propose to build on prior work conducted as part of MESA and JHS in order to enhance the environmental measures available in both studies that can be used to better understand the contributions of neighborhood environments to cardiovascular risk and to health disparities. This work will enhance and build on our collaborations with JHS and with MESA, and will involve a partnership between the University of Michigan, the Jackson Heart Study, and Drexel University. The specific aims of the revision are (1) To enhance the neighborhood -level data available in MESA by adding novel data on food price and various built environment measures that can be better used to study the impact of neighborhoods on changes cardiovascular risk;(2) To create comparable time-varying measures of access to healthy foods, recreational facilities, and other price and built environment data for JHS (3) to promote analyses of neighborhood effects on cardiovascular risk that take advantage of the new environmental data in MESA and JHS. This revision will provide the infrastructure and datasets necessary for CIAHD investigators to pursue environmental health disparities research that is highly synergistic with and expands the scope of CIAHD.